If you’re a freelancer or thinking of becoming one, then you’re in luck. Businesses are now noticing the wide range of benefits that come from content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute in fact, found that B2B marketers are now allocating an average of 28 percent of their marketing budget to content marketing, with the most effective allocating 42 percent. While this is great news, it also means that freelancers need to be at the top of their game in order to remain competitive. So as a freelancer, how do you market the company you work for effectively? Let’s take a look a few simple tricks of the trade.
1. Make Sure Content is Targeted and Interesting
The premise of content marketing for businesses is engaging their target audience through interesting articles, and ultimately using that engagement to drive traffic to their brand. It may seem straightforward, but in order for this to be effective, freelancers need to ensure their content will attract their clients audience quickly and effectively. Try doing research into your clients market: Who are they? How old are they? What do they like? What sites do they visit? This way, you can create content that covers topics they find interesting, use language they can relate to, and publish it on sites you know they will be reading. It’s an efficient way of leveraging the power of content marketing. If you’re unsure of how to do this research, check out Amway for effective strategies on how to deliver results for different companies.
2. Build Your Social Following Appropriately
Companies often rely on their freelancers to lift some if not all of the weight when it comes to promoting their content. Online, this promotion often comes through advertising the articles on social media, as a way of reaching a wide audience and getting the brand name out there. In order to effectively market your clients, building not only a large social following but one that is filled with users that are part of your clients target market, is essential. If your client is a trendy clothes brand aimed at teenagers, but your social following is filled with middle-aged moms, then your promotion may not be as effective. Try to relate to your clients audiences on social media and build a targeted following.
3. Include Links in A Natural Way
Hyperlinks back to the clients website or specific landing page, is key to many content marketing strategies. But for a reader who’s just browsing through interesting articles, advertising can often be frustrating and inhibit future engagement. Therefore, it’s up to a freelancer to include links and resources in a natural, contextual manner so as to increase exposure for clients while also satisfying the user. Fundamentally, the link should always be related to the topic of the article, and the link text should describe exactly what the user will be seeing if they click on it. Rather than the generic ‘click here’, try using keywords that relate directly to the landing page.
While being a freelancer can be a difficult position, the good news is that demand for your work is definitely increasing in market today. Try using as many resources as possible to learn best practices, so that you can be the best at what you do and demand for your work always remains high.
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